e cupboard and putting it on the
sack.] -- It was the girls were giving you heed maybe, and I'm thinking
it's most conceit you'd have to be gaming with their like.

CHRISTY -- [shaking his head, with simplicity.] Not the girls itself,
and I won't tell you a lie. There wasn't anyone heeding me in that place
saving only the dumb beasts of the field. [He sits down at fire.]

PEGEEN -- [with disappointment.] -- And I thinking you should have been
living the like of a king of Norway or the Eastern world. [She comes and
sits beside him after placing bread and mug of milk on the table.]

CHRISTY -- [laughing piteously.] -- The like of a king, is it? And I
after toiling, moiling, digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk with
never a sight of joy or sport saving only when I'd be abroad in the dark
night poaching rabbits on hills, for I was a devil to poach, God forgive
me, (very naively) and I near got six months for going with a dung fork
and stabbing a fish.

PEGEEN. And it's that you'd call sport, is it, to be abroad in the
darkness with yourself alone?

CHRISTY. I did, God help me, and there I'd be as happy as the sunshine
of St. Martin's Day, watching the light passing the north or the patches
of fog, till I'd hear a rabbit starting to screech and I'd go running in
the furze. Then when I'd my full share I'd come walking down where you'd
see the ducks and geese stretched sleeping on the highway of the road,
and before I'd pass the dunghill, I'd hear himself snoring out, a loud
lonesome snore he'd be making all times, the while he was sleeping, and
he a man 'd be raging all times, the while he was waking, like a gaudy
officer you'd hear cursing and damning and swearing oaths.

PEGEEN. Providence and Mercy, spare us all!

CHRISTY. It's that you'd say surely if you seen him and he after
drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and
going out into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and
shying clods against the visage of the stars till he'd put the fear of
death into the banbhs and the screeching sows.

PEGEEN. I'd be well-night afeard of that lad myself, I'm thinking. And
there was no one in it but the two of you alone?

CHRISTY. The divil a one, though he'd sons and daughters walking all
great states and territories of the world, and not a one of them, to
this day, but would say their seven curses on him, and they rousing up
to let a cough or sneeze, maybe, in the deadness of